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The fall-out for this won’t just go into the future…it will go into the past too. I expect Celtic to ask that Rangers be stripped of any titles won during a period where (depending on the outcome of the tax tribunal) they may be seen to have been operating in a financially unfair manner. I couldn’t even raise an argument against that. You can’t fault the effort and commitment of Walter Smith, Ally McCoist, and the players who’ve pulled on that blue jersey. They did everything they could and to the best of their knowledge they were doing it in the right way. They were let down and misled in the same way as the fans were. It doesn’t make it right though that titles were won using money which the club didn’t have.
At this stage, when I think about protecting the club’s history, I’m not thinking about protecting the list of trophy wins…I’m thinking about protecting any last vestiges of dignity. When big men make mistakes, they face them. When big clubs make mistakes, they have to do the same.
Celtic’s protestations that they won’t be affected by Rangers problems are understandable, but those within the corridors of power at Celtic Park must be aware of the reality. Rangers attendances and success for much of the 90s in the face of a weak Celtic have been put forward as evidence that it’s possible for just one side of the Old Firm to flourish. The situation has changed though.
When Rangers achieved that success they were bringing top international players to the club who fans wanted to see. That was made possible by a combination of paying higher wages than other clubs and having the lure of European football, which English clubs had been banned from. These days, neither side of the Old Firm can outbid an English Premiership club on either transfer fees or wages, English clubs can offer European football again, and Scotland’s lowly co-efficient makes success in Europe for our own sides ever more difficult. Remove any competition in the league from matters too…and it will be difficult for Celtic to retain the talent they currently have or attract new talent of a comparable standard. Neil Lennon will also find it hard to justify the need for his 40-man first team squad to the board, now that there looks like being no realistic title challenge to them for the next few years.
Celtic’s finances will also be vulnerable – along with every other Scottish club – as there is the danger that a liquidated Rangers would collapse the SPL’s TV deal, which specifies that both Rangers and Celtic must be included.
Talk of ‘the end of Scottish football’ is off the mark. Closer would be ‘the end of Scottish football as we’ve come to know it’. A period of financial rationalisation will now have to be embarked upon. The obvious answer is for all Scottish clubs to focus on youth development, bringing through players and selling them on. There are problems with this though.
We’re next door to one of the richest and most glamorous leagues in the world, and their scouting networks prefer to pluck Scottish talent while still in their teens rather than waiting for their potential to have been dulled by playing for too long in Scotland. McCarthy and McArthur have done well in England…Shaun Maloney’s struggled. This is something that hasn’t gone unnoticed. Premier League clubs will want our young players before they’ve fully developed and while they can still be shaped both mentally and physically by clubs.
We’ll be left with a league similar to the Brazilian league before Brazil’s economy picked up. Teams will be filled with teenagers who haven’t left yet and veterans who’ve come back to finish their career in their homeland. The middle tier of players at their peak simply won’t be present. Unless they aren’t good enough to play elsewhere.
We’re going to see a downsizing of Scottish football. It’s going to be painful, but it is necessary. Rangers couldn’t afford to be spending the money they were spending, Hearts can’t afford to spend as they have in the past…and many more clubs are in the same situation.
We’re going to get to where we should be, but it’s going to be a far more swift and painful process than it should have been.
Who is at fault? David Murray and Craig Whyte. Perhaps also a media who didn’t exert the same level of scrutiny over Murray’s actions as they thankfully have over Craig Whyte’s. Anyone else? Probably me…and everybody else who cheered as the big names and the trophies rolled up at Ibrox, without stopping to ask where the money was coming from.
So to everybody involved in Scottish football and to everyone who cares about it… sorry.
Mea culpa.
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About the Author
Twice runner-up in Scottish Comedian of the Year finals, Teddy was named ‘Best Up and Coming Comedian’ at the Scottish Variety Awards in 2010. He’s written for two BBC Radio 5 ‘Unsporting Reviews of the Year’, and has also worked as both writer and script editor on the BBC1 Scotland football shows ‘Offside’ & ‘Only An Excuse?’. He’s been a Rangers season-ticket holder for the past 17 years, but he’s all about the football not “all that other shite”. Also has a fondness for Dynamo Kyiv that can be traced back to an unhealthy obsession with Alexei Mikhailitchenko (or Oleksiy Mykhalychenko if you prefer to transliterate from the Ukrainian rather than the Russian. That’s the unhealthy obsession we’re talking about.)
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“has flourished…cracking lines” Jay Richardson, Scotsman
“there are few of his Scottish-based contemporaries that can spin the same high standard of punchlines” Brian Donaldson, Scotland on Sunday
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Great blog, well done, I’m sure it must have been a tough one to write.
It sums up exactly where Rangers should be for me – it is a shame for the decent fans and for the cleaners etc who will lose their jobs. But ultimately, RFC and their fans, have to face up to the fact that, through financial mismanagement, they have been cheating. Once that is accepted and the punishment doled out (not the -10pts for administration, but whatever punishment befits tax fraud), we can go forward and work out how to make sure this can never happen again.
If rangers want to come out of this with any dignity, they are first going to have to acknowledge just how wrong this was.
Thanks, I reckon it’s time for a ‘clean hands’ approach. I heard someone at the match today say “they all want us dead”. Not true. Scottish football wants Rangers to recover…even if only so that the club can pay the bills they owe!
Rangers problems haven’t come from outside of the club, they’ve come from within. That needs to be accepted.
The worry is that the only person who may benefit from the death of the club…is the owner of it.
I’m genuinely bewildered by Rangers fans’ frivolous use of the word dignity when examples of it on display are, in my lifetime at least, few-and-far-between. They must realise it’s relentless repetition only serves to be taken ironically and used as a stick with which to mock them.
A fine analysis, Teddy. Plenty food for thought.